Killing Orphans; or why your mum is alive and she loves you very much.

[King of Nowhere]

No matter how many times this subject comes up, the answer remains the same:

There are three main reasons orphan PCs are so common:

- It's a lot less work than creating names, stories and/or relationships for all of your character's friends and family.
- It's an easy way to justify your character not just settling down and having a job in his city. If you don't have to worry about taking care of your young daughter or aging father, you're free to explore the world!
- It safeguards the player against the old "the villain kidnapped your family! Follow the railroad to save them!" trick so many GMs like to pull. It gets really old, really fast. I had a GM who was particularly bad about this, despite otherwise being a great GM... So after the second time it happened, all player characters in his games were orphans with no family or childhood friends.

I am going to add a 4th reason: not wanting to clutter the narrative.
The DM has a story in mind that will take time. then each and every player will add family connections, intrigue, personal quests, and all those take time. sometimes you just don't want to add more. especially when you don't know much about the world and the setup and the rest of the party, you may want to introduce a generic concept that will work in most situations and will not create problems.

I made my monk with that concept.
His parents were dominated and used as cannon fodder by some evil overlord when he was young, and so he was raised in a monastery. because of his past, he dedicated himself mostly to resisting magic, especially charms (high focus on getting good saving throws, especially will, and on anti-caster build). Having been powerless gave him insecurity problems, that he tries to compensate by fighting and bravado: by going toe-to-toe against deadly odds and surviving, he can feel powerful, and that makes him feel better. Having suffered because of evil people, he wants to fight evil, but he's not really compassionate; he needs to fight to feel better, and he simply sees evildoers as acceptable targets.
I went for this character concept because I didn't knew the DM and all exept one of the players; so I created a character that would always be motivated to seek adventure in any form, and that would be compatible with most groups - he prefers good parties, but he has no problems working with moderately evil people, as long as they don't actively hurt innocents for profit. the party wants to give up the reward to help the poor? sure, my monk is fine with that, he was in for the action anyway. the party wants to kill the prisoners? cool with it, they deserved it anyway.
I also left the evil overlord who killed his parents intentionally vague, so that it could be expanded if needed, or abandoned. after a while i discussed it with the DM and we decided that our plate was already full of quests and we didn't need some other goal, so the evil overlord was already dead. if we had been lacking for a quest, it would have been a good excuse for one.

[Max_Killjoy]

- It safeguards the player against the old "the villain kidnapped your family! Follow the railroad to save them!" trick so many GMs like to pull. It gets really old, really fast. I had a GM who was particularly bad about this, despite otherwise being a great GM... So after the second time it happened, all player characters in his games were orphans with no family or childhood friends.

At least in my estimation, this is the number one reason players do this -- they get sick of anyone important to the character being under constant threat of "The Fridge" or some less-lethal variation thereof.

[icefractal]

Personally speaking, I like (for many characters, at least) for a family to exist, but not be on-screen. But since many GMs (and players) think that the point of having a family is to have them in the spotlight, usually under threat, I sometimes skip having one for that reason.

Making the GM's job harder? IMO, I'm saving them time. I'm preventing them wasting prep time on a plot-line that would be for my benefit but I wouldn't enjoy. Instead, they should use that time for a player who would enjoy the "your family has been kidnapped" hook - or use a different kind of hook. IMO, "you must or else" hooks are less interesting than "you'd want to because" hooks anyway.

Why? Two factors:
1) I've tried the "your family/friends are in peril" hook from several different GMs, and enjoyed it never. At this point, no thanks.
2) I find it difficult to roleplay a deep emotional connection on demand. I might be able to build one up with an NPC that I repeatedly interact with in-game, but not when that interaction happened in the backstory. And so my interactions with family members / old friends / lovers from before the game started tend to feel fake and dissatisfying.

But it's hard to explain this, and some people consider it basically crazy (why would you ever not want your character in the spotlight?), and so sometimes I go the orphan route.

[Lemmy]

I am going to add a 4th reason: not wanting to clutter the narrative.
The DM has a story in mind that will take time. then each and every player will add family connections, intrigue, personal quests, and all those take time. sometimes you just don't want to add more. especially when you don't know much about the world and the setup and the rest of the party, you may want to introduce a generic concept that will work in most situations and will not create problems.

I made my monk with that concept.
His parents were dominated and used as cannon fodder by some evil overlord when he was young, and so he was raised in a monastery. because of his past, he dedicated himself mostly to resisting magic, especially charms (high focus on getting good saving throws, especially will, and on anti-caster build). Having been powerless gave him insecurity problems, that he tries to compensate by fighting and bravado: by going toe-to-toe against deadly odds and surviving, he can feel powerful, and that makes him feel better. Having suffered because of evil people, he wants to fight evil, but he's not really compassionate; he needs to fight to feel better, and he simply sees evildoers as acceptable targets.
I went for this character concept because I didn't knew the DM and all exept one of the players; so I created a character that would always be motivated to seek adventure in any form, and that would be compatible with most groups - he prefers good parties, but he has no problems working with moderately evil people, as long as they don't actively hurt innocents for profit. the party wants to give up the reward to help the poor? sure, my monk is fine with that, he was in for the action anyway. the party wants to kill the prisoners? cool with it, they deserved it anyway.
I also left the evil overlord who killed his parents intentionally vague, so that it could be expanded if needed, or abandoned. after a while i discussed it with the DM and we decided that our plate was already full of quests and we didn't need some other goal, so the evil overlord was already dead. if we had been lacking for a quest, it would have been a good excuse for one.

Indeed. The 3 reasons I listed are just the most common ones, but by no means the only ones. Sometimes players simply have a character concept that legitimately works better with a background that excludes any family ties. Your monk is a great example.

[Cluedrew]

Tell them what I told my players:
Your mum is alive, and she loves your very much. Deal with it.

I wouldn't make it mandatory, not as a standard campaign rule. But in general I agree with the idea of making characters more involved with the setting. Maybe not family, but friends or contacts and a history in the world. I played a character who wasn't an adventurer at all. Registered guild crafter who got involved in the action, partially to keep an eye on those outsiders.

Personally I leave family details unspecified on characters. Even if I know, or have a rough idea, I will leave it open until it looks like it might come up.

[gkathellar]

At least in my estimation, this is the number one reason players do this -- they get sick of anyone important to the character being under constant threat of "The Fridge" or some less-lethal variation thereof.

I'm feeling increasingly lucky that I've never run into this, because it seems like it's A Whole Thing.

And that's really bad. Seriously, if your players are building social outcasts because they don't want you to mess with them, just give them an explicit promise not to do so.

[Silly Name]

I'm feeling increasingly lucky that I've never run into this, because it seems like it's A Whole Thing.

And that's really bad. Seriously, if your players are building social outcasts because they don't want you to mess with them, just give them an explicit promise not to do so.

One of my favourite characters I've run was a Paladin for whom I had written an extensive backstory, consulting with the DMs about the various elements which tied into his homebrew setting.

As the campaign progressed, I witnessed the death of my brothers as the army they were in was annihilated, and had to learn about the heroic sacrifice of the love interest whom I had been looking for (which was what prompted me to become an adventurer). I suspect my father survived only because we never visited the city he lived in.

So, yes, it's a thing GMs do, mostly because it's a quick and easy way to deliver an emotional punch to the player. But it also burns players off, because, well, if all the meaningful relationships in our backstories get used against us, we end up not wanting to have those ties anymore.

If this never happened to you, consider yourself lucky, as your GMs have been people who understand that tormenting PCs eventually leads to uncaring, unconnected characters.

Mind you, I don't want to say that GMs should never target the important relationships of a PC, but it should be done in moderation and in a way that makes sense. Has a demon decided to impersonate you while you were away dungeon-delving? Well, it makes sense it enthralled your wife, so that's fair game. But if the BBEG just kidnaps/kills Mama and Papa for no real reason than to hurt you, it steers into "dastardly moustache-twirling ass" territory.

[Max_Killjoy]

I'm feeling increasingly lucky that I've never run into this, because it seems like it's A Whole Thing.

And that's really bad. Seriously, if your players are building social outcasts because they don't want you to mess with them, just give them an explicit promise not to do so.

It is a WHOLE thing, and in fact I'd say it hangs on / propagates in part because it's such a trope in fiction that people don't stop to think how horrible it is (even without the added layer of it overwhelmingly happening to female characters). And it's not just villains threatening people important to the protagonist, more broadly it's the idea of characters that exist ONLY to give motivation to another character or be saved by another character or whatever.

It's a trope that I LOATH to the extent that I've got a character whose backstory is (in part) a direct inversion from the supposed "motivating NPC's" point of view.

[Pauly]

On the other hand, I'd wager the overwhelming majority of everyone who was ever considered a 'hero' in real life came from an absolutely normal and loving upbringing. I'd wager very nearly everyone who choses a high risk job - whether in military service, law enforcement or as a cartoonist - has an enormously ordinary background.

We feel somehow that our adventurers need to come from some sort of special circumstance, their mothers milk infused with the ability to overcome hardship and wickedness. To a man (m/f/w) they were born under a dark sign, during a thunderstorm, omens and portends in every fibre of their beings - and frankly, the harder we try to make them oh so fated, the more boring and predictable it becomes.

I do it too, mind - I'm not pointing any fingers. But I do think we need to at least be honest about the fact that .... it's the polar opposite of being inventive, creative and original: Our backstories are, generally speaking, utter crap. And, using such harsh words, let's say I'm speaking mostly of myself - unless you agree =)

Victoria Cross winners most often comes from homes where one or both parents had died when the children were young. They were pushed into the ‘protector’ role early in life.

[Mechalich]

With regard to kidnapping, murdering, or otherwise threatening everyone and everything the PCs love, part of the reason this is a thing has to do with the power imbalances common in TTRPGs and in the attendant fiction, in the same way they impact the superhero genre.

Normally, threatening innocent people who are merely related to your enemy has consequences. If you're the villain it means you're committing crimes wholly unrelated to your actual scheme and therefore bringing in unrelated institutions to investigate your activities. So the villain really has to weigh the pros and cons and think about how they might maintain plausible deniability.

The problem you have, in the superhero genre and likewise in upper-level D&D (which is firmly within the superhero genre), is that the institutions are powerless and therefore no one exists to enforce the norms against harming bystanders. Superman provides a nice, tidy example of how this works. Superman loves Lois Lane - a completely ordinary human - her ability to materially impact any conflict in which Superman is involved is zero, her only influence over any story involving Superman is in how she impacts his mental state. At the same time, anyone in any position to actually threaten Superman in a fight couldn't care less about what the cops or even the army would think about kidnapping Lois Lane.

Once you have a setting wherein the masses truly are powerless, the only function any member of those masses has is as a prop to support the story of one of the tiny group of people in the setting who are powerful enough to matter.

[Erloas]

I would add that 2 of my last 3 characters never even mentioned their parents. And yes, the third one did have his parents killed, but I didn't care about anything happening to them, I simply wanted a good reason for the character to be fully committed to the church. Being raised by the church was a good way for the character to be dedicated to the church but not be a paladin or cleric. The other two I didn't mentioned them at all because they aren't really important to the character. This isn't the story of "son of Bill and Michelle." It doesn't matter if they're servers in an inn, a fisherman, or dead. They make no difference to the story.
If the DM really wants to make something of it I can do something latter. But at a low level a villain knowing about my parents, or my parents being of any value doesn't make any sense. And at high levels where the character is known enough that someone might want to target them and have the ability to figure that out... well the stakes are probably already bigger than a couple people, even if they are important to me, and not really going to be enough to drive a story.

But really, even in computer games and such, the "you must save your family" storyline really has no appeal to me. It is just lazy.

[Cluedrew]

If this never happened to you, consider yourself lucky, as your GMs have been people who understand that tormenting PCs eventually leads to uncaring, unconnected characters.

Why do people play with these GMs? Seriously, I would drop the game and go back to writing out the story about my PC and their family if that came up.

Also I image it starts losing its effect at high levels: "You killed my father and forced me to go to the party cleric to resurrect him."

Victoria Cross winners most often comes from homes where one or both parents had died when the children were young. They were pushed into the ‘protector’ role early in life.

Then couldn't just being the oldest sibling and charged with the protection of your younger siblings have the same effect.

As a bonus comment, I go for undefined families in role-playing games. My major fantasy stories tend to have protagonists with big supportive families who would be harder to kidnap than the protagonist. Still they are usually separated from the protagonist, if not by distance/a war zone than their own responsibilities.

[Max_Killjoy]

With regard to kidnapping, murdering, or otherwise threatening everyone and everything the PCs love, part of the reason this is a thing has to do with the power imbalances common in TTRPGs and in the attendant fiction, in the same way they impact the superhero genre.

Normally, threatening innocent people who are merely related to your enemy has consequences. If you're the villain it means you're committing crimes wholly unrelated to your actual scheme and therefore bringing in unrelated institutions to investigate your activities. So the villain really has to weigh the pros and cons and think about how they might maintain plausible deniability.

The problem you have, in the superhero genre and likewise in upper-level D&D (which is firmly within the superhero genre), is that the institutions are powerless and therefore no one exists to enforce the norms against harming bystanders. Superman provides a nice, tidy example of how this works. Superman loves Lois Lane - a completely ordinary human - her ability to materially impact any conflict in which Superman is involved is zero, her only influence over any story involving Superman is in how she impacts his mental state. At the same time, anyone in any position to actually threaten Superman in a fight couldn't care less about what the cops or even the army would think about kidnapping Lois Lane.

Once you have a setting wherein the masses truly are powerless, the only function any member of those masses has is as a prop to support the story of one of the tiny group of people in the setting who are powerful enough to matter.

I can't remember who the characters were or what comic, as it's been YEARS, but I recall it had a couple of different twists on this.

The first one was a Superman-like character (in power level) who had a strict code about how much force he used, how lethal he'd be, and would "play the game" with villains, etc... but he expected his opponents to abide by some rules too. At one point a villain kidnapped someone really important to him, roughed them up, and threatened to kill them if he didn't cooperate with some scheme... 30 seconds later he'd found the "secret" lair, ripped out a wall, and killed the villain.

The second was a villain who tried to "fridge" a superhero's supposedly "normy" girlfriend, who turned out to be the secret identity of some eldritch power from another universe exiled to earth...

[Max_Killjoy]

I would add that 2 of my last 3 characters never even mentioned their parents. And yes, the third one did have his parents killed, but I didn't care about anything happening to them, I simply wanted a good reason for the character to be fully committed to the church. Being raised by the church was a good way for the character to be dedicated to the church but not be a paladin or cleric. The other two I didn't mentioned them at all because they aren't really important to the character. This isn't the story of "son of Bill and Michelle." It doesn't matter if they're servers in an inn, a fisherman, or dead. They make no difference to the story.
If the DM really wants to make something of it I can do something latter. But at a low level a villain knowing about my parents, or my parents being of any value doesn't make any sense. And at high levels where the character is known enough that someone might want to target them and have the ability to figure that out... well the stakes are probably already bigger than a couple people, even if they are important to me, and not really going to be enough to drive a story.

But really, even in computer games and such, the "you must save your family" storyline really has no appeal to me. It is just lazy.

Yes... one of the things that ruined Dragon Age 2 for me...

Spoiler

Show

...was the cliched, unavoidable, and just stupid thing with Hawke's mother.

[Silly Name]

Why do people play with these GMs? Seriously, I would drop the game and go back to writing out the story about my PC and their family if that came up.

It's more of a pattern. It's not like they wear a big hat saying "I'll torment the PCs through their families" when we meet those GMs. It takes a bit of time for these things to happen, and even then, you might be willing to let it slide the first few times. It's only when you start noticing the pattern that you understand what's going on.

Also I image it starts losing its effect at high levels: "You killed my father and forced me to go to the party cleric to resurrect him."

Ah, my greatest enemy as a GM: cheap resurrection magic.

[Kaptin Keen]

Victoria Cross winners most often comes from homes where one or both parents had died when the children were young. They were pushed into the ‘protector’ role early in life.

And I know dozens - literally - of soldiers and policemen. Not a single one of them has any sort of orphan-y og tragic background. So unless you happen to have a source to some actual statistics, for a wider group than recipients of one order, I'll stick with my reasonably thorough personal experience.

[Metahuman1]

I'm feeling increasingly lucky that I've never run into this, because it seems like it's A Whole Thing.

And that's really bad. Seriously, if your players are building social outcasts because they don't want you to mess with them, just give them an explicit promise not to do so.

There are a lot of them out there and have been for a long time. After all, the Trope was good enough for people who wrote the stuff the creators of D&D stole or borrowed ideas form. Its good enough for them and for you.

@Lockles

And if he won't let me use something to do what it says it does, what, precisely, makes you think he would let me go outside the rules to engineer having family, but to also make them functionally unreachable as targets?

Please. I really want a direct answer from you too that direct question. What, precisely, make you think he'd let me have the family, but also have them not be just an easy target/cudgel to beat on my PC with, given that he wont, according to you, even let the background do what it says it does?

As too your insistence that it's not on the feature, it's on the GM, so? Your point? Making Orphan characters is on the GM as well. Your not pushing back on GM's to fix that though, your putting it in the players laps. I'm trying to show you that you've selected an ineffective target if you wish to fix that problem.


Incidentally, most DM's would just say that that means I'm being a bad player and a power gamer and boot me in my experience over that sort of thing. IF I told them I wasn't going to give them backstory's, just a sheet with mechanics and a name. Don't you know that pages of backstory are usually required, even though it's not read by in the range of 9 to 9.9 DM's who require it, which is an overwhelming majority of GM's in my experiance?

[Max_Killjoy]

Hell, as a GM even, I try to invert this trope... in one campaign, one of the PCs married a noblewoman from a magic-heavy culture, and then when her parents' home was attacked by assassins, he rushed there fearing the worst, only to find out that she had killed one with mind magic and the others had fled. So instead of the start of a revenge arc, it became the start of a mystery arc -- who were these attackers, and what was going on.

[Koo Rehtorb]

And I know dozens - literally - of soldiers and policemen. Not a single one of them has any sort of orphan-y og tragic background. So unless you happen to have a source to some actual statistics, for a wider group than recipients of one order, I'll stick with my reasonably thorough personal experience.

Neither of those things have much, if anything, to do with fantasy adventurers. Those would link to town guards or... soldiers.

There isn't really a good modern counterpart to adventurers, but I'd say professional mercenaries like Blackwater, or professional criminals, especially international ones, would probably be a closer fit.

[Kaptin Keen]

Neither of those things have much, if anything, to do with fantasy adventurers. Those would link to town guards or... soldiers.

They are real life heroes - well, some of them are. No, there's not really any good comparison between what are essentially fantasy super heroes, and anything in real life. Blackwater ... would be closer to fantasy villains, right?

It's about backgrounds. My point is that I see no real tendency among those from a hard background (I work with such people), they may be slightly attracted to a type of work (military) that lends itself to it - but the great majority of those I meet tends towards gangs, crime, drug abuse .. and so on.

On the other hand, people who work for others - most soldiers (that I've met), policemen, nurses, social workers - come from stable, happy childhoods.

[Koo Rehtorb]

On the other hand, people who work for others - most soldiers (that I've met), policemen, nurses, social workers - come from stable, happy childhoods.

This is what I'm saying. These are people with steady, stable, productive employment. These are pretty much the exact opposite of adventurers.

It's not really about "hero" vs "villain", you can have good or evil adventurers (though I would personally say that adventuring lends itself more easily towards evil alignments). It's about whether you fit into the social norms and have a place in society or not.

[Cluedrew]

OK, two things.

First unless there is a sociologist in the audience actually mapping the demographics of these professions and figuring out exactly what that all means might be beyond us. I mean how does being an orphan with a good foster family (which I hope is common than scavenging on the streets now a days) compare with having divorced parents or a dysfunctional but not abusive parent?

Second I'm not sure it really matters. Do you want to see stories about, play as or with, these characters: yes or no? That I think is the main question here. Personally I am board by these "island people" (aka murder-hobos) who have no meaningful connections with other people in the setting. But I don't care where they came from. Ammanda was one of my few characters whose parents were explicitly laid out (sort-of), but they never came up in play. The fact she knew all the other mercenaries in town did.

[RazorChain]

Frankly, if your players are so automatically terrified of their characters' families being kidnapped that they don't want any, there's a deeper problem here.

It's an established thing - part of the reason I tend to favor new players is that there's an alarmingly high chance that experienced players have developed a real sense of paranoia around weirdly ubiquitous bad GMing practices.

I run a lot of character driven campaigns where family and the PC's personal pursuits are the focus of the game. Everybody is supposed to make at least 3 NPC's that are a family/friend/rival/enemy but most show up with a lot more. The family isn't as important as the connection to the world through NPC's that the PC's know from the past

Sometimes I'll even introduce a NPC and ask a player how his character knows said NPC and the players can also spend bennies to introduce a relation to an NPC. This might be a guard that served in the same mercenary unit as the PC, a wizard that went to the same wizards college etc.

This helps with immersion, world building and making the PC's connected to the world.

Buuuuut.......then you have players that just really don't want to play ball. They know that to make drama you have to expose yourself to it and they know that family, friends and aquintances can be used against them and I'm not even talking kidnappings or murder. I'm talking about drama and social leverage. It's harder to say no to a friend in need than a stranger.....let's not even talk about saying no to your own mother.

Strangely the players that want their characters to live in dumpsters and not know anybody have been very inclined to abuse the systems we have been playing or making the absolutely most mechanically powerful chacacters

[icefractal]

Buuuuut.......then you have players that just really don't want to play ball. They know that to make drama you have to expose yourself to it and they know that family, friends and aquintances can be used against them and I'm not even talking kidnappings or murder. I'm talking about drama and social leverage. It's harder to say no to a friend in need than a stranger.....let's not even talk about saying no to your own mother.

I love cilantro, but I know several people who can't stand it. If I were hosting a party, I wouldn't put cilantro in all the food and demand they eat it.

Sure, you may need family tensions for some kinds of drama, and you need cilantro for the classic taco experience. But not everyone cares about that kind of drama (or that kind of tacos), and telling them that they should isn't going to result in a good time.

Now if the players in question were trying to get lots of family advantages without any downsides, I might agree they want to have their cake and eat it too. But if they're willing to "live in dumpsters" then that doesn't seem like the case.

[Kaptin Keen]

This is what I'm saying. These are people with steady, stable, productive employment. These are pretty much the exact opposite of adventurers.

It's not really about "hero" vs "villain", you can have good or evil adventurers (though I would personally say that adventuring lends itself more easily towards evil alignments). It's about whether you fit into the social norms and have a place in society or not.

No. They're the opposite of your preconception of what an adventurer is. That's what I'm saying. The people most likely to perform heroics are good people from good backgrounds (so to speak - no alignment parallels intended). Whereas, as nearly as I can tell, people from various kinds of rough backgrounds wind up .. well, it's a little complicated, but to oversimplify immensely, they turn out dumb, emotionally stunted and broken, prone to making really counter-productive life decisions - until they get kids, at which point they tend towards getting their stuff together, and straighten out to a remarkable degree.

I'm not claiming to be an expert. I work with unemployment, and I see all kinds - at least one locally quite famous gunman has crossed my desk, along with all kinds of other unfortunates - and for the samle size I'm have access to, the conclusion is crystal clear: You want to make criminals better people? You make them care about someone else, preferably a little girl child.

Irrelevant to the discussion except to say that .. as far as I can tell, having a rough background places you about as far from adventurer as it's possible to come. Sure, some of them become criminals, but any romantic idea of what it's like to be a criminal - thinking it's somehow comparable to our fantasy ideal of adventuring - is as wrong as it's humanly possible to be.

[Marcloure]

Why do people don't like when personal names connected to a character gets threatened? I mean, I understand that you don't like when the first thing that happens to them is some random dude to kidnap them. But if there is a villain, way wouldn't it attack your family to hurt you? Especially if it's a recurring villain that already knows the player's characters.

[RazorChain]

Why do people don't like when personal names connected to a character gets threatened? I mean, I understand that you don't like when the first thing that happens to them is some random dude to kidnap them. But if there is a villain, way wouldn't it attack your family to hurt you? Especially if it's a recurring villain that already knows the player's characters.

Because some players are true murder hoboes. They want no way that the villains can get at them. If they have no home then they are hard to find. If they no friends or family the nobody has leverage. If they kill everybody, allow no witnesses to live and leave a scorched earth then there is no one to tell it was them or take revenge. If they are mechanically powerful enough then nobody can beat them.

[Koo Rehtorb]

No. They're the opposite of your preconception of what an adventurer is. That's what I'm saying. The people most likely to perform heroics are good people from good backgrounds (so to speak - no alignment parallels intended). Whereas, as nearly as I can tell, people from various kinds of rough backgrounds wind up .. well, it's a little complicated, but to oversimplify immensely, they turn out dumb, emotionally stunted and broken, prone to making really counter-productive life decisions - until they get kids, at which point they tend towards getting their stuff together, and straighten out to a remarkable degree.

I'm not claiming to be an expert. I work with unemployment, and I see all kinds - at least one locally quite famous gunman has crossed my desk, along with all kinds of other unfortunates - and for the samle size I'm have access to, the conclusion is crystal clear: You want to make criminals better people? You make them care about someone else, preferably a little girl child.

Irrelevant to the discussion except to say that .. as far as I can tell, having a rough background places you about as far from adventurer as it's possible to come. Sure, some of them become criminals, but any romantic idea of what it's like to be a criminal - thinking it's somehow comparable to our fantasy ideal of adventuring - is as wrong as it's humanly possible to be.

This whole thing seems to be from you thinking that "adventurer" means "good heroic person" for some reason, which is just a total misconception of what an adventurer even is. "Adventurer", as a term, has absolutely nothing to do with the person's particular moral standing.

An adventurer, in the context of a fantasy setting, is someone who is not gainfully employed in society, and instead goes outside of society in search of dangerous and/or profitable endeavours. This can be someone who goes off into the wilderness to fight dragons to protect the countryside. But just as equally it can be someone who goes to a far off jungle on another continent to slaughter the locals in search of golden treasures. If you have steady employment as a town guard you may well be a stable, emotionally balanced, and even goodly person, who does what's right and helps defend his town. But you're not an adventurer, by definition.

[Florian]

I share RazorChains experience on this.

I mostly play L5R 4th in "Samurai Drama"-mode and for drama, things need to be a bit more personal than usual.
For example, three of the ongoing personal story arcs that ran parallel to the main arc:

The Crab Bushi: Locked in an unhappy political marriage, with a good-for-nothing brother in law acting a steward of the estate, squandering money due to incompetence. The high point came when the wive was actually kidnapped, the player was really torn about willfully botching the situation and get rid of her, or be dutiful and save her.

The Phoenix Shugenja: We played the full stages of matchmaking, dating and marriage to an Imperial noble, her true love. The high point here was that the noble always wanted to impress his fiancé and prove that he's not just a pampered bureaucrat, so he regularly went into competitive mode and tried to solve a case or scenario on his own.

The Scorpion Bushi: A total failure as a Scorpion: Honest, absolute conviction in Bushido... and a full Ninja and assassination training. The high point was that the character was rather high up in the chain of succession and was often contacted by his father and uncle to deal with some missions, the Scorpion way of doing it, which he despised, but he also didn't dare show his true colors.

Good, that really works for the system because those things are covered by Disadvantages and you're rewarded pretty good for coming up with those things, talk about them with the GM, how to incorporate them. In addition, the system is deadly enough that you don't have to go to the same extremes like in D&D-style games to keep the tension high.

[RazorChain]

I love cilantro, but I know several people who can't stand it. If I were hosting a party, I wouldn't put cilantro in all the food and demand they eat it.

Sure, you may need family tensions for some kinds of drama, and you need cilantro for the classic taco experience. But not everyone cares about that kind of drama (or that kind of tacos), and telling them that they should isn't going to result in a good time.

Now if the players in question were trying to get lots of family advantages without any downsides, I might agree they want to have their cake and eat it too. But if they're willing to "live in dumpsters" then that doesn't seem like the case.

I know! Some people just want to kick down the door, kill the monster and grab the loot. But why do they then want to participate in my character driven game?

I have a lot of players that want to participate in my games and I tell people it's not dungeon crawling combat games. It's games that focus more on drama, character goals and interpersonal relations.But then some players show up want more dungeons and mega boss monster fights, try to make the most powerful fighting characters by bending the rules, kill everything while living in a dumpster.

It just ends one way, me sending them off to ruin somebody else's games